Volition, the studio popularized by the Saints Row franchise, has laid off over 30 people this week, including general manager Dan Cermak, according to a new report from Kotaku. Volition previously had roughly 200 employees before the round of layoffs.
The layoffs reportedly come in the face of poor sales of the developer’s most recent game, Agents of Mayhem, which released last month on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. According to Kotaku’s sources, the publisher and parent company of Volition, Deep Silver, was unhappy with the sales of the game.
To date, Deep Silver has not shared any sales figures of the open-world action adventure game, but UK sales charts did reveal that in the game’s debut week — which was a slow period for new retail releases — the title only managed to grab the No.4 spot, and then quickly fell down the chart in the following weeks.
Deep Silver has yet to comment on the report. Further, it’s worth noting that layoffs are typical after a game releases and development dials down, even for succesful ones.
Founded in 1996, and then purchased by the now defunct publisher THQ in 2000, Volition has made a name for itself in the industry over the years with series like Red Faction, and more recently Saints Row, an over-the-top series that in many ways has come to partly define the Illinois-based company, which is now owned by Deep Silver following THQ’s bankruptcy in 2013.